How Two Geologists Changed Our Understanding of Human Evolution

Paper $28.00ISBN: 9780226787343
Published
November 2001
Not for sale in the British Commonwealth except Canada

"'Garniss, lend me your knife for a second, will you,' I whispered." So begins Java Man, the inside story of how one discovery—a human skull found on the island of Java—by two geologists shook the foundations of science. By uncovering new evidence about the hominid known as Java man, Carl C. Swisher and Garniss H. Curtis were able to date his fossil remains at 1.7 million years, an age that stunned the scientific community because it pushed back the time when humans migrating out of Africa first reached Eurasia by nearly one million years. Cowritten by the popular science writer Roger Lewin, this is a gripping and informative account of the discovery that breathed new life into the human origins debate.

Introduction1. Tales a Child Can Tell2. The Road to Trinil3. On to Mojokerto4. The Lure of the Missing Link5. Dubois's Story: Link No Longer Missing6. The Child Has a Date7. Rocky Marriage, Painful Separation8. On the Cusp of Humanity9. A Change of Body10. A Change of Mind11. The Origin of Modern Humans12. Headhunters at Ngandong13. Facing the InescapableNotesIndex

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